My response to “Five Proofs of Evolution”, available from http://www.evolutionfaq.com/articles/fi ... -evolution1. The universal genetic code. All cells on Earth, from our white blood cells, to simple bacteria, to cells in the leaves of trees, are capable of reading any piece of DNA from any life form on Earth. This is very strong evidence for a common ancestor from which all life descended.

Or, this can be very strong evidence for a common creator. My Ford Mondeo shows many, many similarities with Ford Focus, which is smaller. Should I say that my Mondeo evolved from Focus? Or is it the other way round? Do you think that if I wait long enough my Mondeo will evolve in something better? The only evolution here is in the mind of the CREATOR who thought “Oh, what if I modify this and that and make such and such a car?”

2. The fossil record. The fossil record shows that the simplest fossils will be found in the oldest rocks, and it can also show a smooth and gradual transition from one form of life to another.Wow, we have to be careful what we call “oldest rocks”. If we have ‘old rocks’ and ‘new rocks’, where did the new rocks come from? Meteors? It’s better to say “simplest fossils are at the bottom layers of sediment”. But then you have places on the globe of ‘unconforming strata’, namely layers where the strata does not conform to the pattern, or even strata that is at different angles of other strata, as if the initial strata was eroded and new strata was added.

The explanation o the strata could be the Flood. Obviously, the simple organisms were buried first, since they cannot run as fast as the more complex ones. Snails were buried first, horses a bit latter. It looks like horses run a bit faster than snails, so they reached higher grounds, while the snails had already been buried.As for the ‘smooth and gradual transition’, there should be millions of intermediary ‘links’. Well, the strata is still stubborn, and doesn’t want to give us such evidence (not the counterfeited ones, that so many people are not aware of!). If we don’t have evidence, we don’t have a case. (You need a dead body in order to have a murder case, right?) By the time we have solid evidence, this is just guesswork. If anyone wants to believe this, they have this right. Just don’t call it science!!!

3. Genetic commonalities. Human beings have approximately 96% of genes in common with chimpanzees, about 90% of genes in common with cats (source), 80% with cows (source), 75% with mice (source), and so on. This does not prove that we evolved from chimpanzees or cats, though, only that we shared a common ancestor in the past. And the amount of difference between our genomes corresponds to how long ago our genetic lines diverged.

Those who study literature know that the books of a certain author have ‘genetic commonalities’. That means they somehow resemble in style, words used, subject maybe etc. I have some books in my library that resemble a lot. Have they evolved from each other? Should I wait a few ‘billions of years’ for them to produce another ‘genetically modified’ book?

4. Common traits in embryos. Humans, dogs, snakes, fish, monkeys, eels (and many more life forms) are all considered "chordates" because we belong to the phylum Chordata. One of the features of this phylum is that, as embryos, all these life forms have gill slits, tails, and specific anatomical structures involving the spine. For humans (and other non-fish) the gill slits reform into the bones of the ear and jaw at a later stage in development. But, initially, all chordate embryos strongly resemble each other.

To me, this is plain silly. There’s actually no ‘proof’ here. Think of it: fish embryos have gill slits that become ... gills, when the fish is adult. Fair enough! Humans have ‘gill slits’ that become ... ears and jaws. If I said, “Birds have these very, very long ears, with feathers on them ... and they use them for flying.” You’d probably say, “Hey, dummy, those are wings, not ears!” And you’d be right. But when someone says that human embryos have gill slits that become ears and jaws we call them ... well, scientists... Human embryos DO NOT have gill slits, it’s just the way ears and jaws look like at that age. You may have a dog that looks like a cat and vice versa. Proving? Sugar looks very much like salt. Try and substitute one for another in your coffee (or tea if you like!) and you’ll see the difference.

5. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Bacteria colonies can only build up a resistance to antibiotics through evolution. It is important to note that in every colony of bacteria, there are a tiny few individuals which are naturally resistant to certain antibiotics. This is because of the random nature of mutations.When an antibiotic is applied, the initial innoculation will kill most bacteria, leaving behind only those few cells which happen to have the mutations necessary to resist the antibiotics. In subsequent generations, the resistant bacteria reproduce, forming a new colony where every member is resistant to the antibiotic. This is natural selection in action. The antibiotic is "selecting" for organisms which are resistant, and killing any that are not.

My brother and I are quite different. He’s very resistant to cold; I’m not. If an ‘ice age’ appears out of the blue, I die, he survives. That’s “natural selection” right? And his children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be ‘better adapted’ right? Question: are they still humans, or are they sort of monsters? (Hey, I was gentle enough to have my brother survive in the story, so I have the right to call him a monster, right?)So, the resistant bacteria survives antibiotics and becomes ... pigs? No! Flying pigs? No. It becomes nothing, it stays a poor bacteria waiting for a stronger antibiotic to be invented. If these are the best five proofs for evolution, it’s quite a flimsy theory.

How about the opposite: God creating everything in 6 literal days? I have a problem with that too. My wonder is: why did it take him so long? I guess I’ll ask him when we meet!

I wonder what exactly you consider to be a "kind." To me, it sounds like an all-too-easy fall-back argument. There was a time when anti-evolutionists used very similar arguments to deny any sort of speciation; now that overwhelming evidence of speciation has been found, they have altered their argument to deny the development of new genera and families. Perhaps once further evidence is discovered,they will change the definition of "kind" to mean orders, classes, and phyla. My point is that it's all to easy, once it has been established that one organism evolved into another, to say "Well they're both the same 'kind,' so that still doesn't prove anything." That's why the "kind" argument really doesn't seem valid to me.Generally speaking, the more people talk about "being saved," the further away they actually are from true salvation.

florinmoc wrote:My response to “Five Proofs of Evolution”, available from http://www.evolutionfaq.com/articles/fi ... -evolution1. The universal genetic code. All cells on Earth, from our white blood cells, to simple bacteria, to cells in the leaves of trees, are capable of reading any piece of DNA from any life form on Earth. This is very strong evidence for a common ancestor from which all life descended.

Or, this can be very strong evidence for a common creator. My Ford Mondeo shows many, many similarities with Ford Focus, which is smaller. Should I say that my Mondeo evolved from Focus? Or is it the other way round? Do you think that if I wait long enough my Mondeo will evolve in something better? The only evolution here is in the mind of the CREATOR who thought “Oh, what if I modify this and that and make such and such a car?”

Yeah, but your Ford probably isn't so much similar to Skoda, is it? Or to radio or anything like that, right? Because we're talking about all humans, not only like vertebrates

florinmoc wrote:2. The fossil record. The fossil record shows that the simplest fossils will be found in the oldest rocks, and it can also show a smooth and gradual transition from one form of life to another.Wow, we have to be careful what we call “oldest rocks”. If we have ‘old rocks’ and ‘new rocks’, where did the new rocks come from? Meteors? It’s better to say “simplest fossils are at the bottom layers of sediment”. But then you have places on the globe of ‘unconforming strata’, namely layers where the strata does not conform to the pattern, or even strata that is at different angles of other strata, as if the initial strata was eroded and new strata was added.

The explanation o the strata could be the Flood. Obviously, the simple organisms were buried first, since they cannot run as fast as the more complex ones. Snails were buried first, horses a bit latter. It looks like horses run a bit faster than snails, so they reached higher grounds, while the snails had already been buried.As for the ‘smooth and gradual transition’, there should be millions of intermediary ‘links’. Well, the strata is still stubborn, and doesn’t want to give us such evidence (not the counterfeited ones, that so many people are not aware of!). If we don’t have evidence, we don’t have a case. (You need a dead body in order to have a murder case, right?) By the time we have solid evidence, this is just guesswork. If anyone wants to believe this, they have this right. Just don’t call it science!!!

Fortunatelly, you don't have to. But it is Because these "rocks" can be also dated, said how old are they... And you think that some flood took like billion of years to reach the maximum?Regarding unsmooth transition, the fossils are not made of all the material, but only small fraction is saved. Also,not all fossils has been found yet. The research continues all the time and new fossils and new species are being found...

florinmoc wrote:3. Genetic commonalities. Human beings have approximately 96% of genes in common with chimpanzees, about 90% of genes in common with cats (source), 80% with cows (source), 75% with mice (source), and so on. This does not prove that we evolved from chimpanzees or cats, though, only that we shared a common ancestor in the past. And the amount of difference between our genomes corresponds to how long ago our genetic lines diverged.

Those who study literature know that the books of a certain author have ‘genetic commonalities’. That means they somehow resemble in style, words used, subject maybe etc. I have some books in my library that resemble a lot. Have they evolved from each other? Should I wait a few ‘billions of years’ for them to produce another ‘genetically modified’ book?

You probably do not get, what "96% of common genetic information" means, do you? That doesn't mean it's only similar, but it's basically identical. So, if you like the books, it's like taking e.g. Bible, which was written by people in churches in past in accordance to previous version, but they made some mistakes or differences in accordance to what they liked. If you compared those Bibles, you could make some "tree of evolution" for them too

florinmoc wrote:4. Common traits in embryos. Humans, dogs, snakes, fish, monkeys, eels (and many more life forms) are all considered "chordates" because we belong to the phylum Chordata. One of the features of this phylum is that, as embryos, all these life forms have gill slits, tails, and specific anatomical structures involving the spine. For humans (and other non-fish) the gill slits reform into the bones of the ear and jaw at a later stage in development. But, initially, all chordate embryos strongly resemble each other.

To me, this is plain silly. There’s actually no ‘proof’ here. Think of it: fish embryos have gill slits that become ... gills, when the fish is adult. Fair enough! Humans have ‘gill slits’ that become ... ears and jaws. If I said, “Birds have these very, very long ears, with feathers on them ... and they use them for flying.” You’d probably say, “Hey, dummy, those are wings, not ears!” And you’d be right. But when someone says that human embryos have gill slits that become ears and jaws we call them ... well, scientists... Human embryos DO NOT have gill slits, it’s just the way ears and jaws look like at that age. You may have a dog that looks like a cat and vice versa. Proving? Sugar looks very much like salt. Try and substitute one for another in your coffee (or tea if you like!) and you’ll see the difference.

This isn't much and just about how it looks, but from and into what it really evolves (during the embryogenesis)

florinmoc wrote:5. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Bacteria colonies can only build up a resistance to antibiotics through evolution. It is important to note that in every colony of bacteria, there are a tiny few individuals which are naturally resistant to certain antibiotics. This is because of the random nature of mutations.When an antibiotic is applied, the initial innoculation will kill most bacteria, leaving behind only those few cells which happen to have the mutations necessary to resist the antibiotics. In subsequent generations, the resistant bacteria reproduce, forming a new colony where every member is resistant to the antibiotic. This is natural selection in action. The antibiotic is "selecting" for organisms which are resistant, and killing any that are not.

My brother and I are quite different. He’s very resistant to cold; I’m not. If an ‘ice age’ appears out of the blue, I die, he survives. That’s “natural selection” right? And his children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be ‘better adapted’ right? Question: are they still humans, or are they sort of monsters? (Hey, I was gentle enough to have my brother survive in the story, so I have the right to call him a monster, right?)So, the resistant bacteria survives antibiotics and becomes ... pigs? No! Flying pigs? No. It becomes nothing, it stays a poor bacteria waiting for a stronger antibiotic to be invented.

You really think that evolution (or better said speciation, or even in this case like geniation or familiation) takes just one antibiotic pressure and like 1 year?

In the early years of the experiment, there were several common evolutionary developments shared by the populations. The mean fitness of each population, as measured against the ancestor strain, increased—rapidly at first, but leveling off after close to 20,000 generations (at which point they grew about 70% faster than the ancestor strain). All populations evolved larger cell volumes and lower maximum population densities, and all became specialized for living on glucose (with declines in fitness relative to the ancestor strain when grown in dissimilar nutrients). 4 of the 12 populations developed defects in their ability to repair DNA, greatly increasing the rate of additional mutations in those strains. Although the bacteria in each population are thought to have generated hundreds of millions of mutations over the first 20,000 generations, Lenski has estimated that only 10 to 20 beneficial mutations achieved fixation in each population, with less than 100 total point mutations (including neutral mutations) reaching fixation in each population.[2]

The process of evolution is the cornerstone of the study of life. Those attempting to put forth other explainations of life need to expect that their will be serious scepticism. That's called science. You can't just whine that you don't like or don't understand evolution. You have to come up with something that makes better sense. Intelligent design is simple and easy to understand but if you look closely at the designs you must see intelligence in every design. As someone working in the medical world, I can assure you that no omniscient being would be such a poor designer. A few examples. In mammals the path of air into the lungs crosses the path for food into the stomache. This causes choking, aspiration pnumonia and just the annoying and uncomfortable getting food down the wrong tube. Poor design. The system in birds is far superior.Speaking of birds, they also have a lung and airsac system that pushes air through thier lungs in only one direction. We mammals breath in and out which mixes old air with new air. Poor design.The intelligent design theory must also explain why sex is so much more exciting with strangers? Why are men so much more likely to kill thier step children than thier biological children? The entire Chiropractic industry in based on the poor design of the spine that evolution stuck us with.If the designer is intelligent he obviously does't like humanity as much as he likes birds.

Hey I am a teenager that randomly came across this conversation while I was researching, and I felt led by the Lord to say something. First of all, I believe that to have an argument that will actually benefit the two parties involved you cannot just throw dirt on the other person's belief system, I am not going to do that, and I really don't like hearing of people who do(including and espescially Christians who believe in a Creationist viewpoint, the Bible says we are to be a light to the world, not judges!) Second, there really is no solid proof for either of the two viewpoints, or the Evolutionary theory, would not be a theory, but if you would like to know why I believe in Creation, it is because it fits better, Charles Darwin once said that evolution takes more faith to believe in than Creation. If you go back to the origins of both viewpoints, that is to say that if you asked a Creationist where God came from, or if you asked an Evolutionist where matter came from, you end up with either an eternal Intelligent Designer(God) or eternal matter. It takes much less faith to believe in an eternal Intelligent Designer than eternal matter. Many people believe that because Evolution is taught in schools and pushed by the media, that science proves the Evolutionary theory, but that is not so, there are so many gaps in both viewpoints that people on both sides use against each other for example: if a Creationist asked an Evolutionist why there are no transitional forms, of course the Evolutionist will answer that we just haven't discovered any yet, just as the Creationist would defend his viewpoint with an answer that cannot be proved. The thing is there are so many things in this earth that suggest an intelligent designer, rather than random chance. I know that there are lots more things that could be said on both viewpoints, but I am only a teenager and I am trying not to turn this into a lengthy dissertation, so I will leave it at that. I would like to hear anything you have to say, and if you find anything that I said that is wrong, just send me a message and I'll correct my mistakes Thanks, God Bless You

"The scientific establishment bears a grisly resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition"-D. Gould

Are you telling us that there is no solid evidence for gravity, because there is the Theory of Gravity --- which of course would not be a theory if it had any solid proof?

I would also like to point out that evolution is not a belief system, just like it is not a belief system that the Earth is round or that genomic DNA undergoes random mutations that may or may not give rise to new, beneficial, or more often, harmful traits that are then subjected to the natural selection.

I am sorry to rain on your parade but unlike the theory of evoltuion, creationism does not have any single piece of evidence or phenomenon supporting it. Just because you feel intelligent design is somehow more believable or logical does not make it true. It amazes me how creationists happily accept things like quantum mechanics that are probably beyond the understanding of 99.9% of the mankind, but have hard time accepting evolution, which is well-understood, well-supported by evidence and easy to understand even for school children.

If there was an intelligent designer, why so many things are so very badly designed in the first place? Or was the designer just a sick old bastard who tossed a few thousand genetical illnesses in humans and other animals just for the fun of it? Well, at least if you look at the god in the bible, this would not be a big suprise...

First of all Gravity has been a law for many years now so I don't know where you got the information that it was still a theory, but Gravity has proof, which made it a Law. I am saying that if there is no proof for a Theory or Hypothesis then it remains that, a Theory or Hypothesis. To answer your second part Creation has lots of proof, people tend to disregard it though, such as the fact that until recently some of the kings in the Bible had not shown up in archaeological digs and such, until archaeologists found writings speaking of them. The reason that evolution is widely accepted, is because it has been taught in schools for about a hundred years now, but that is only because it is the best way to spread propaganda, not because it is true. During the World War Hitler used propaganda in schools to gain support for his actions, even though they were evil.

As to your comment about diseases, have you ever wondered why nobody had cancer till recent years, excepting a few. In Leviticus in the Bible God gives food laws, that are designed to keep you from getting sick, but people break them every day and put things into their bodies that definitely shouldn't be there. Did you know that you can get religious exemptions for immunizations? Do you know why? Because some people object to having aborted "fetal tissue" in their bodies, not to mention that some immunizations have mercury in them, which is a known toxic substance, and others that aren't so common. If you look up the food laws in the Bible, and look at the people groups who actually eat that way, they are some of the healthiest people on the planet. Other diseases like AIDS are caused by sin, and man can't blame those on God. The thing is that diseases are what you get if you don't follow his laws. This website promotes a diet that follows God's food laws to a T , and hundreds of people have been cured of cancer by staying on this diet, in fact many of them were given months to live http://www.hacres.com/library/testimonies/search.God was the one who prevented these diseases in the first place, we humans are the ones who created them by our lifestyle, and what were the badly designed things that you were talking about?

"The scientific establishment bears a grisly resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition"-D. Gould

Major Problems with Evolutionunknown chemicalsunknown processesunknown life formsunknown reproduction methodsunknown atmospheric compositionunknown oceanic soupunknown time and placeAlso according to Evolution: The Big Bang caused Order?(how can disorder cause order)also higher forms of life cam from lower forms of life which came from matter coming together?If there were millions of years of evolution where are the trillions of transitional forms?(archaeologists have only found a few disputable ones)

"The scientific establishment bears a grisly resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition"-D. Gould

What has this to do with evolution? Evolution does not try to explain how the universe begun, nor does it answer how life begun. Evolution is the process by which living organisms evolve and differentiate when they are subjected to natural selection, and the theory of evolution is the scientific interpretation of that phenomenon.

Not every single detail about evolution is know, just like we do not know everything about gravity. Or the birth of the universe, or how life begun - even though there are theories regarding those as well.